Schlock Mercenary: Pillage, THEN burn.

November 12, 2015 7:10 PM

In the summer of 2000, carbosilicate amorph Schlock enlisted with third-rate mercenary band Tagon's Toughs. Since then, he's given us over 5000 comics' worth of hurting people, breaking things, and interspeciated offices, in the process garnering author Howard Tayler four Hugo nominations and a cease-and-desist letter. The archives are well-indexed, but given their length, may I suggest Archive Binge?

Tayler has also dabbled in board games, podcasts, and autobiography. (N.B. last link contains a description of mental illness.)

posted by d. z. wang (18 comments total)

And recipes:
Chuppaquesos, are actually awesome.
Smutto, somebodies actually done it.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 7:20 PM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

I still think of the live deletebox here as TRBoE.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:22 PM on November 12, 2015

It's also the only webcomic I know with three authorized (though non-canon) prequel novels.
posted by d. z. wang at 7:24 PM on November 12, 2015

Been reading Schlock for years now, it's fun and the art has come a long way. This is a well crafted post, thanks dzw.
posted by Wretch729 at 7:55 PM on November 12, 2015

Archive Binge is such a great idea! Thanks for that.
posted by wintersweet at 7:55 PM on November 12, 2015

I'm impressed with the 15 years of uninterrupted daily updates (forget the copyright, Tayler has all 7 Habits of a Successful Comicker) and SM's one of those comics that started out with AWFUL art and evolved into not-great-but-a-distinctive-style (but then, have you seen the first Peanuts, Garfield and Dilbert?) I'm kinda surprised nobody's optioned it for TV or movie... come on, Schlock is probably the EASIEST character to CGI EVER.

Schlock has been one of my daily reads ever since it joined the now-defunct Blank Label Webcomic Collective (which also included Steve Troop's Melonpool and Kris Straub's Starslip, for the greatest rivalry of space-opera-comedy universes in sci-fi history).
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:58 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think this is the comic where when he doesn't update regularly people get worried. That is how very regular his update schedule is.

It is also an awesome comic. The sci fi is pretty hard, and the characters are really wonderful.
posted by poe at 7:59 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yep.
posted by hank at 8:31 PM on November 12, 2015

I've only checked out Schlock every once in a while, because of Howard's work on the Writing Excuses podcast. I shall archive binge now! Great post!
posted by Navelgazer at 8:31 PM on November 12, 2015

Schlock has been a daily read for years (after weeks of catch up when I started), and is always enjoyable.
posted by birdsquared at 8:54 PM on November 12, 2015

I've recommended this strip several times in various askmes. Used to be a daily reader but the arcs have gotten more complicated so for me binge reading every couple months works better now.

But I've had no luck getting my gaming group interested so when I reference an Ommminous Hummm I'm the only one to get it.
posted by Mitheral at 9:09 PM on November 12, 2015

I've been following that comic for years. I remember when the recipe for the chuppaqueso came out, and I tried making one. Pretty tasty, and I still make them occasionally, but a greasy cheese-in-cheese omelette/burrito never feels the healthiest.
posted by JiBB at 11:00 PM on November 12, 2015

I think this is the comic where when he doesn't update regularly people get worried. That is how very regular his update schedule is.

That would be true.... if he in fact ever missed a day, which I'm not sure has happened in many years.
posted by Paladin1138 at 5:14 AM on November 13, 2015

I think this is the comic where when he doesn't update regularly people get worried. That is how very regular his update schedule is.

That would be true.... if he in fact ever missed a day, which I'm not sure has happened in many years.

Yeah, he's super-ultra-paranoid about ever missing one, to the point that he's blogged about how OH MY GOD THE BUFFER IS DOWN TO SEVEN DAYS I HAVE TO WORK ALL NIGHT. Whenever he does that, I imagine a dozen webcartoonists just bursting into tears and begging God for a better work ethic.
posted by Etrigan at 5:44 AM on November 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

I have the "Pillage, THEN burn" T-Shirt. I've gotten glares, and a question if the skyline featured was Seattle when crossing the border, to the point where I no longer wear it when crossing the border.

I read it daily with the same level of regularity he posts it.
posted by Bovine Love at 6:31 AM on November 13, 2015

Yeah I think the more apt time to worry is when the blog hasn't updated in a while. The buffer is notoriously prodigious - I feel like it was usually talked about in the 20-30 day range, but I can't recall seeing anything in recent years - so I think the bigger worry is that he could get terraported into the sun and we wouldn't notice for weeks because the buffer would keep rolling.

Don't get trapped under any heavy object, Tayler family; there's no way we'd know to come rescue you till far after the food ran out.
posted by phearlez at 1:49 PM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Whenever he does that, I imagine a dozen webcartoonists just bursting into tears and begging God for a better work ethic.

Looooong ago there was some sort of update deadpool thing a bunch of the troubled souls were setting up to try to motivate themselves (I think Megatokyo meant to join but didn't even get the join message posted in time *highhat*) and someone suggested to Howard that he join in. He said he hadn't missed a day in years even while doing another job and now he was full time and that joining up would seem sort of pointless and borderline mean.
posted by phearlez at 1:53 PM on November 13, 2015

As of mid-2007, he says he's been late a few times, but apparently only due to technical difficulties, never for lack of content.

It's interesting how okay I am with the violence in Schlock. It's not at all subdued. People get eaten alive. People get blown apart. Some cow-like creature gets sodomized (and not gently) with a tree to make it run faster. I have no idea why I'm not disturbed by any of this.
posted by d. z. wang at 2:16 PM on November 13, 2015